During the final round of a two player game tonight, the other player played her two cards before me and left me with a Courtyard that only had common fields in it. Since it was the final round, I had no need of a common field and paying the money for it was detrimental to my final score.

In this situation, would I have been able to take one of the common fields from the Courtyard and simply discard it rather than paying the two coins to play it? The rulebook, as shown below, seems to suggest that you must pay for it.

rulebook wrote:

Whenever a player plays a “Field” Action card, he must immediately pay 2 Cash for it.

We ended up playing that I had to pay and play the field but I wanted to get clarification if possible.

Boy, I have played plenty of games of this, but have never seen that happen. I would say you have to take and pay for a field, by the RAW. I would also say that is pretty devilishly good card play by your opponent.

Thank you everyone for the replies and the clarification. It seems that we did play it right. And yes, I did do the extra card draw allowed in the two-player game. It was another common field... What are the odds?